WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court, given the choice of rejecting or endorsing a race-based
admissions policy at the University of Texas, opted instead yesterday to send back to a lower court
a case involving a woman who was rejected by the university in 2008.

The ruling stopped short of reversing earlier high-court decisions on affirmative action, but it
ultimately might mean that universities will face a higher standard when employing race-based
admissions policies.

The woman, Abigail Fisher, argued that she was rejected by the university even though her
academic achievements should have earned her a chance to be admitted. Fisher, who is white, said
she was rejected because the university considered race as a factor for admission.

By a 7-1 vote, the court declined to make a sweeping decision on affirmative-action policies and
handed the case back to an appeals court, ruling that not enough scrutiny had been given to the
University of Texas’ admissions program.

“The reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives
would produce the educational benefits of diversity,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the
majority.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the dissenter. Justice Elena Kagan, who had worked on the case
as President Barack Obama’s solicitor general, recused herself.The case was argued nearly a decade
after the Supreme Court held that the University of Michigan Law School could consider race among
the factors in its admissions process, in an effort to create a diverse student body.

Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan Washington
research group, said that by neither rejecting nor endorsing the school’s policy, the court
actually said quite a bit.

In 2003, he said, the high court had a completely different lineup of justices, including Sandra
Day O’Connor, who has since been replaced by Samuel Alito.

The court “could’ve said those days are over, and we will no longer allow public institutions to
take into consideration race,” Wheeler said.

“A lot of people thought the chance was very good that the court would take a fundamentally
different view of the matter than they did in 2003,” he said. “It’s the dog that didn’t bark, if
you want to look at it that way.”

He said the Supreme Court will have another opportunity to weigh in on affirmative action during
its next session, which begins in October. It will consider whether Michigan violated the
Constitution’s equal-protection clause by amending its state constitution to bar affirmative
action.

Higher-education officials in Ohio agreed that yesterday’s decision probably will not prompt
major changes.

Bruce E. Johnson, president of the Inter-University Council of Ohio, said that even if the
Supreme Court had struck down the Texas admission standards, it would have had a “relatively minor
impact” at Ohio’s 14 public universities.

Johnson said affirmative action exists to “correct hundreds of years of discrimination,” and
admissions policies in Ohio are always carefully formulated.

Ohio State University evaluates its admissions process every year, said Vern Granger, an
associate vice president and director of admissions. For now, there is no reason to expect
significant changes.

“At this point … it’s reaffirmed the importance of student-body diversity,” Granger said of the
ruling.

At Ohio University, Craig Cornell, vice provost for enrollment management, said there is no
cause for concern: “We’ve never looked at race … as any significant factor. It doesn’t seem like
there would be any major changes for us.”

Fisher had asked the court to rule that the Texas’ policy went further than the 2003 Michigan
decision allows because Texas automatically admits in-state high-school students who are in the top
10 percent of their class. Because some schools have more minority students — inner-city schools
and those near the Mexican border, for example — Fisher argued that the university already had a
diverse student body and need not have considered race.

Beyond accepting the top 10 percent of students at each high school, the University of Texas
also considered other factors, such as family status, race and academic achievement. Fisher, who
was not among the top 10 percent in her suburban Houston school, argued that considering race as a
factor had doomed her admission.

Her lawyers had asked the court to bar race as an admissions factor but also had suggested that
the court consider overruling the Michigan decision.

An Ohio State law professor wrote and submitted one of about 70 outside briefs to the Supreme
Court on behalf of the University of Texas. The document had more than 40 signatories and was
submitted with the support of many African-American advancement initiatives, said the professor,
Sharon L. Davies, who is also the director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and
Ethnicity at Ohio State.

“I think, if anything, what the court’s decision does today is, it reaffirms the pursuit … of
race-conscious admissions practices,” Davies said.

Although it might seem anticlimactic, the court’s ruling upholds its 2003 decision, she
said.